


Flying Too Close to the Sun

by FireLordShiro



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Eventual Keith/Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Fluff and Angst, Hurt Lance (Voltron), I Will Go Down With This Ship, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Lance is Keith's Stability, M/M, No Porn, No Smut, Shiro is like a brother to them both, Slow Burn, Slow Burn Keith/Lance (Voltron), don't make this a sheith thing cause it's not, just feelings, lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 09:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13498816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireLordShiro/pseuds/FireLordShiro
Summary: “And I just… I don’t know. When you were gone-” Keith started, swallowing down the lump in his throat when he remembered the few months when Shiro was nowhere to be found, “Lance was my friend, kind of. It wasn’t that different from earlier on, but we didn’t bicker as much. There was some mutual respect, and we worked really well together. And now…”Keith trailed off, searching his brain for the reason he felt so hurt by Lance’s new attitude since the last mission, the Lotor mission, as Keith now thought of it. Lance had closed himself off to Keith completely, not even snapping at him like he used to in the beginning. He didn’t speak to Keith at all if he could help it.“Now it’s different. And you lost someone you were close to,” Shiro finished for him."And I don't know why."





	Flying Too Close to the Sun

“You’re even moodier than normal, what’s with you today?”

 

Keith fought the urge to roll his eyes at the question, and shot a glare at Shiro while he struggled to get his armor off in the locker room. 

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

Shiro’s arms were crossed, and he leaned against an adjacent locker with a knowing look on his face. After knowing him for so many years, Keith was used to this side of Shiro, but being used to it didn’t make it any less annoying.

 

“You’ve been snapping at people all day, man. What’s up?”

 

Keith sighed, ran one hand over his face. He hadn’t realized he was being short with his teammates today, but looking back now he could see it clearly. A wave of guilt washed over him. 

 

“Couldn’t sleep,” he mumbled, carefully avoiding Shiro’s eyes as he reached for a towel and threw it over his shoulder as he made his way to the showers. He heard Shiro’s soft footfalls behind him and rightly assumed that he was being followed. He didn’t mind. Shiro was like a brother to him, his presence a calming one in this world of theirs that had become more and more chaotic.

 

Keith reached beyond the white curtain in one of the shower stalls to turn on the water, pausing briefly to allow the gentle stream to cover his hand, testing for the temperature. Shiro leaned against the sink on the opposite wall, head down to give Keith some semblance of privacy even though he wasn’t alone.

 

“Wanna talk about it?”

 

Keith heard the question over the noise of the shower once he had stepped in and pulled the curtain closed behind him. He sighed under the warm water, letting his eyes close before he answered.

 

“Not really.”

 

Shiro huffed a laugh. He should’ve anticipated that response. 

 

“I’m not leaving until we talk about this. Just think out loud.”

 

Keith sighed and hung his head, resigned to the determination in his friend and leader, and started talking as he reached for shampoo.

 

“Ever since that last mission… I just. I feel so different.”

 

Shiro hummed a response, enough to let Keith know that he was listening but not enough to disrupt his thought process. 

 

“I know everyone says they understand why I did it and everything, but I didn’t realize up until the minute I decided to do it that I was capable of something like that. It’s like a side of myself I didn’t know was there, and I’m a little afraid of it.”

 

In truth, Keith’s intended sacrifice during the last mission had been haunting him. He could remember it even now, the red glow of the blasters growing brighter as he flew ever closer to his demise. He was Icarus, flying too close to the Sun. 

 

His eyes had been closed when Lotor took out the battlecruiser from behind. He heard the impact before he realized what was happening, and he assumed that he was the one who had caused it. He assumed that his life was over, that the lack of pain was some sort of twisted reward for voluntarily sacrificing himself. Then he heard the static over the comms in his ear, heard the gasps of his friends and teammates, heard Lance’s strangled cry of “ _ Keith _ !,” heard  _ life _ ringing in his ears, and when he finally forced himself to open his eyes, the explosions were further off than they should’ve been.

 

He’d been reprimanded by everyone once they boarded the castle of lions, but they had all eventually accepted his explanation and told him how grateful they were to have him still there with them, still on the team.

 

Except for Lance.

 

Keith sighed, pulled himself from his reminiscing, and positioned himself so that his face was directly under the steady stream of water descending from the shower head, letting his unruly black locks fall into his face and stay there.

 

“What else?”

 

Keith almost jumped when he heard Shiro’s voice ring out from the other side of the shower curtain, he’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone. He stuttered once before he reminded himself to just speak his mind, Shiro would never judge him.

 

“Lance has been weird.”

 

He could hear Shiro’s noise of affirmation, low but tangible. 

 

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that, too.”

 

“And I just… I don’t know. When you were gone-” Keith started, swallowing down the lump in his throat when he remembered the few months when Shiro was nowhere to be found, “Lance was my friend, kind of. It wasn’t that different from earlier on, but we didn’t bicker as much. There was some mutual respect, and we worked really well together. And now…”

 

Keith trailed off, searching his brain for the reason he felt so hurt by Lance’s new attitude since the last mission, the Lotor mission, as Keith now thought of it. Lance had closed himself off to Keith completely, not even snapping at him like he used to in the beginning. He didn’t speak to Keith at all if he could help it.

 

“Now it’s different. And you lost someone you were close to.” Shiro finished for him as Keith switched to body wash, doing his best to avoid the bruises and cuts all over his body, a medley of purples and blues, all in varying states of healing.

 

“And I don’t know why.” Keith mumbled, and he couldn’t tell if Shiro heard him or not, but he felt the finality of the statement and knew that the conversation was over. 

 

Shiro stayed quiet for the next few minutes, and Keith grew suspicious that his leader had actually left the bathroom to give him some privacy, a suspicion that he confirmed when he poked his head through the curtain and looked around.

 

Keith turned off the water and stood there for a few minutes, collecting his thoughts. He knew Shiro wouldn’t have strayed far, but he did appreciate the time to himself.

 

It was just a few minutes later when Keith emerged from the bathroom, clad in a fluffy red robe that was soothing against his training-worn muscles, and threw a dirty look in Shiro’s direction when he caught his mouth twitching up into a grin at the sight.

 

“Shut up, it’s soft.” Keith breezed past Shiro and back to his locker, retrieving the pieces of armor that he’d stripped off of himself earlier and starting towards the door. Shiro’s voice followed after him, but this time he didn’t stop for it.

 

“You’re gonna have to talk to him, you know.”

 

And Keith didn’t turn around, didn’t miss a step, because he had anticipated that much. He’d been telling it to himself for a few minutes now. Instead, all he did was nod once, assuming that Shiro could see it, mumbling a quiet “I know” as he continued walking.

 

***

 

Finding a time to confront Lance turned out to be more difficult than Keith anticipated. Not only were all of the paladins, Allura included, now incredibly busy with training schedules, and diplomatic meetings, and coordinating with the rebels and the Blade of Marmora, and like, normal human things, but Lance seemed completely determined to never be alone.

 

Any time Keith thought he had stumbled across the Cuban boy by himself, he would round the corner to see that Pidge or Hunk was there, too. It was annoying at first, but after another week of being ignored during training sessions and meals, Keith had reached his breaking point.

 

The next time he found Lance during a stretch of downtime, he was sitting with Pidge on the floor of Red’s bay, tinkering with some electronic gadget that he probably should’ve left to Pidge.

 

The heads of both the paladins snapped up when they heard footsteps approaching, but Pidge quickly redirected her attention back to the laptop in front of her. Lance watched Keith walk toward him for a moment, then suddenly focused his attention on his hands.

 

“Lance, I need to talk to you.”

 

Lance looked back up at that, startled to see that Keith had gotten so close so quickly. He stood above both of them now, for once looking down on Lance. Keith could see Lance’s adam’s apple bob in his throat when he swallowed.

 

“Okay. Talk.”

 

Lance had averted his eyes again, and Keith balled his hands into fists at his sides to prevent himself from lashing out. He took a steadying breath before continuing.

 

“Alone.”

 

Pidge’s eyebrow twitched up in interest then, but her eyes stayed trained on the screen in front of her. Lance fidgeted at Keith’s tone but he refused to back down.

 

“Anything you have to say to me you can say in front of Pidge. We’re a team, remember?” Lance didn’t meet Keith’s eyes when he asked the question, but then something snapped in him and he continued on, looking up with clear anger in his eyes, “Or did you forget about what it means to be a team after you left?”

 

Keith faltered at that. Pidge let out a low, peeling whistle, but still kept her gaze locked on her screen.

 

“Is that what this is about?” Keith snapped, balled up fists be damned, Lance could  _ not _ still be mad at him for this.

 

Lance’s body seemed to move on its own then, pulling his long limbs into a standing position before Lance realized it was happening, and then he was hovering above Keith, barely three inches taller, glaring.

 

“You seem to already know that answer.”

 

Lance’s eyes were wild, rage crackling behind the irises like lightning. Keith had never seen him like this before, and it only served to rev his own anger up more.

 

“That doesn’t make any sense! Me leaving didn’t affect anything! You took over Red, Allura took over Blue, and Shiro’s back in Black. Voltron’s fine, no one’s hurt, I don’t understand why you’re so mad about this.”

 

Lance opened his mouth to argue but then thought better of it, eyes searing into Keith’s before he turned on his heel and stalked over to Red where she sat waiting patiently.

 

“Forget it,” he mumbled, one hand waving behind his head as Red turned to him, opened her massive jaws to invite him inside.

 

“Hey! I’m not done!”

 

And Keith followed, noting briefly that Red still recognized him, still let him in, as he stepped over the threshold and into the short walkway that led to the cockpit. Lance was a few steps ahead of him, not pausing until they both emerged into the small, dimly lit room behind Red’s eyes.

 

“I’m not done talking to you.” 

 

Keith’s hand was on Lance’s shoulder, spinning him around easily. Even though Keith was smaller, he was unquestionably the stronger of the two, and he manhandled Lance with ease.

 

“What if I’m done listening, hm?”

 

Keith furrowed his eyebrows, blinking when Lance jerked his shoulder so violently that Keith’s hand fell away.

 

“I don’t want to listen to what you have to say anymore, Keith. Nothing you say means anything anymore.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

And Lance was laughing, a cold, bitter sound, not the cheerful noise that Keith had become accustomed to. 

 

“You don’t remember that time right after we got Shiro back, when I came to you? Because I was so sure that the team needed to move on without me because I didn’t offer anything that someone else couldn’t?”

 

Keith stuttered, remembering. Where was Lance going with this?   
  


“And you thought I was crazy, right? You told me that I was an important member of the team, that everyone was a member of Voltron for a reason, that we all had our place, do you remember that?”

 

Keith nodded, a dull feeling of dread slowly crawling into his stomach.

 

“And then you just decide to leave. You left, Keith. We needed you here. And you left.”

 

Keith opened his mouth to respond but Lance cut him off.

 

“No, now I’m not done. You left first, and then as soon as you came back you tried to sacrifice yourself. You were going to  _ die _ , Keith. Did you honestly expect that to not affect me? Do you really think you’re so disposable?”

 

Keith took one step backward, stunned. He just stared at Lance, stared at those eyes that were now a strange mixture of anger and pain, staring right back at him. Staring right through him.

 

When Keith finally regained enough of himself to speak, he was cut off, not by Lance, but by a new voice cutting through the air between them.

 

“ _ Paladins, get to your lions. The castle is under attack _ .” Coran. Keith recognized the voice instantly, recognized the buzzing and whirring inside Red as she prepared herself, recognized the spike in adrenaline in himself as battle loomed overhead. 

 

Lance’s eyes flashed with panic for a brief moment before the resolve kicked in and he turned abruptly, finding his pilot’s seat and pulling a helmet out from underneath. He didn’t have his full armor but there just wasn’t time. He pressed the small receiver on the side to connect his comms once the helmet was on, and he spoke such a steady voice that Keith almost didn’t recognize it.

 

“I’m on my way out now. I’ll hold them off while you guys get set.”

 

And then Red was turning toward the door of her hangar, standing on all fours, and roaring loud enough to shake the entirety of the castle.

 

“Uhh, Lance?” Keith stammered, scrambling for something to hold onto. “You do know I’m still in here, right?”

 

Lance was too focused to speak. Instead, he pulled the steering controls closer to him and pushed Red forward, propelling out of the hangar and into the blackness of space in two seconds flat, sending Keith flying into the back wall with the acceleration.

 

“I know. No time.” 

 

That was the only response Keith got before Lance swiveled Red around in the air, landing them face to face with the Galra fleet that was headed their way.

**Author's Note:**

> WELL I tried my hand at writing smut for a minute and got uncomfy so I switched to angst and plot development which is more my ~speed~
> 
> thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed!
> 
> [side note there will be 13 chapters because I believe in creating our own luck and I think Lance and Keith would, too]
> 
>  
> 
> TWITTER @ FIRELORDSHIRO !!!


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